Chiu Kang-chien (19 May 1940 - 27 November 2013) was born on Gulangyu, opposite Xiamen in Fujian, and moved with his family to Taiwan in 1949. He studied drama at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts from 1961 and then at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii from 1964. Back in Taiwan he and friends founded the quarterly journal Theatre, introducing the avant-garde theatre and cinema of Brecht, Antonioni and Godard to Taiwanese readers; the Shaw Brothers screenwriting chief Stephen Soong noticed him and invited him to Hong Kong, where from 1966 he wrote in the studio's screenwriting department. His first produced screenplay was the 1968 film directed by Yueh Feng, followed by others including a 1969 martial-arts film, the 1969 Dead End, the 1970 The Singing Killer, the 1971 The Duel and the 1972 Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan. He left Shaw Brothers in 1974 for Taiwan, returned to Hong Kong in the early 1980s as script adviser on The Story of Woo Viet (1981), and thereafter wrote under the pen names Tai On-ping and Chiu Tai On-ping. Closely associated with directors such as Ann Hui, Patrick Tam and Stanley Kwan, he won Best Screenplay at the second Hong Kong Film Awards in 1983 for Hui's Boat People, set in post-war Vietnam, and again at the sixth awards in 1987 for Love Unto Waste; Rouge took the same prize at the eighth awards, and his 1990 screenplay for Full Moon in New York won Best Original Screenplay at the 26th Golden Horse Awards. In 1992 his script for Stanley Kwan's Center Stage helped Maggie Cheung win the best actress prize at the 42nd Berlin Film Festival. He directed three features: a 1977 modern-dress version of Dream of the Red Chamber shot in Singapore, a 1985 Taiwan film, and Ming Ghost (1990), later retitled for Hong Kong release, adapted from a novel by Kevin Tsai and starring Joey Wong. In 2006 he wrote the screenplay for Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet. He died of a heart attack in Beijing on 27 November 2013.
With a literary and avant-garde sensibility, Chiu Kang-chien reshaped how Hong Kong screenplays were written; Boat People, Love Unto Waste and Rouge portray psychology and female desire with unusual depth and influenced the New Wave generation, and he was one of the few writers to win best-screenplay honours at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards.
Achievements
- 1983 · Won Best Screenplay at the second Hong Kong Film Awards for Boat People.
- 1987 · Won Best Screenplay again at the sixth Hong Kong Film Awards for Love Unto Waste.
- 1989 · Won Best Screenplay at the eighth Hong Kong Film Awards for Rouge.
- 1990 · Directed Ming Ghost, adapted from a novel by Kevin Tsai and starring Joey Wong.